2. The source
Vibe
XXL
HIP-HOP MAGAZINES
From looking at these three magazine cover that are all for the genre of Hip-hop/rap I can tell
that the audience that they will be attracting would be majority African American males. Their
interests would include hip-hop both old school and modern. They would ideally be 18+ due to
the explicit content of most of the artists featured but I believe the audience they would likely be
attracting would be 16-25 year olds. They will look into these magazine for lifestyles of their
favorite artists to inspire their life's or to replicate or emulate certain parts of their role models
life's. essentially to improve their lifestyle.
3. MEDIA PACKS
Looking at these 2 media packs you can see that they have a very similar audience
bases which I imagine is very similar with The sources readership. From my
interpretations of the audience from the front cover I guessed correctly so the front
cover gives off a clear representation of what to expect.
4. REPRESENTATION
I think that the representation for these magazines are all quite similar but I feel
like people judge the type of people featured in these magazine as they are often
African American males rapping about explicit things like: drugs, guns, money and
women. The way they speak/rap about these things is in a way that some people
may feel is as I said too explicit. This definitely gives a negative representation to
the style of magazine that it is and will put some people off reading it due to the
way the people featured in it talk about certain things.
Although there is a lot of negative representation for the type of people within
these magazines to other people their success can give a positive and inspirational
representation to others like families and young aspiring artists from similar
backgrounds to some of the people that will feature in the magazines. Often this
type of magazine will try to put as much of a positive message on these artists as
possible to open up peoples minds on the fact that it doesn’t matter where you
start out you can be on top with hard work.
5. AGE AND GENDER
Within the magazines chose it tends to display and speak about artists that 20+
but most artists features tend to be around the 30-40 age bracket which doesn’t
represent the type of audience that is expected to be seen reading this magazine.
I believe they do this to use these artists which are well established which usually
comes around the 30s when people become solidified in the world of hip hop, with
exceptions of a few artists which may make it a bit earlier. These people and
artists are used as a source of inspiration and idolism to the younger audience
that is reading the magazine.
As a whole these magazines seem to stick to these artists and don’t really ever
look at other artists like maybe some that are upcoming or to look out for in the
future like other music magazines like Kerrang.
The genre of hip hop is very much made up of the Male gender with only a small
percentage of them being female so this magazine is the same and is pretty much
full up of male influences. Even the colour schemes and the contents of the
magazines is predominantly male orientated and it will be rare to see a female
related product like make up or perfume.
6. SOCIAL GROUPS
Within these magazines there is a very clear social group divide and there is only
really one social group that is being targeted within these magazines which as
previously I spoke about is a Male African American audience. As they mostly
focus on this group other groups like Females, other ethnicity's and older people
are excluded from these magazines, although they will feature some females and
people of other ethnicity’s sometimes in their magazines this isn't the main
building blocks of their magazine and will rarely make it onto the feature of the
magazine or the front cover. I think that within
